Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve been reading some folks’ claims about how batteries are the key to a bright green renewable future. Of course, we wouldn’t need batteries if we didn’t try to depend on unreliable, intermittent sources like solar and wind, but let’s set that question aside for the moment.
A number of ways of storing energy exist that allow us to generate electricity as needed. Batteries, pumped water storage, compressed air, electro-mechanical flywheel systems, electro-chemical “flow batteries”, all are in use in various locations. And there are “intermittent flow” systems, which although they are not storage, allow for greater generation at certain times … including Niagara Falls, where the flow over the falls is reduced at night so more power can be generated when it’s not masquerading as a tourist attraction. Not storage … but pretty cool nonetheless …
Figure 1. Niagara Falls, minus the water.
Setting Niagara aside, I thought I’d look at how much energy storage exists in the world. Here’s a list of all of the world’s energy storage systems, by type.
Figure 2. Global energy storage systems, with capacity in terawatt-hours.
I love science because I am constantly surprised. In this case, the surprises are how much bigger pumped hydro storage is than all the others. The sum of all other systems is about a twentieth of the pumped hydro storage.
The next surprise was where lithium ion batteries, the Tesla Powerwall style of batteries, fall on the list … second from the bottom.
Being curious, I thought I’d look at just the US storage systems. Figure 3 shows that result.
Figure 3. As in Figure 2, but for US energy storage systems, with capacity in terawatt-hours.
The US pretty much mirrors the rest of the planet. Mainly pumped hydro, not much lithium ion batteries.
Now that looks all impressive … but is it really? So I thought I’d compare the electrical energy storage shown in the figures above with the amount of electricity consumed in one single day. I started by looking at the globe as a whole in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Global energy storage system compared to global daily electricity consumption.
Hmmm … doesn’t look at that impressive compared to even one measly day’s electricity usage. For example, all of the lithium ion “Tesla-style” batteries in service would only supply the global electricity demand for … wait for it … two-hundredths of one second.
And once again, I looked at the corresponding US data as well, as shown below in Figure 5.
Figure 5. As in Figure 4, but for US energy storage system compared to US daily electricity consumption.
Proponents of solar and wind power will be glad to know that lithium ion batteries can power the US for about 50% longer than the global average … which is to say, they hold about three-hundredths of one second’s storage for the US, rather than two-hundredths of a second for the world.
Now, looking at this, you’d be tempted to think, wow, we could do it all with pumped hydro energy storage. But pumped hydro has some huge disadvantages:
• To do it you need the proper geographical setup, with hills, a water source, and a place to dam up a valley to make a storage lake.
• Such sites exist, but they are few and far between. And a number of countries have no such sites.
• Often, such sites have roads, towns, or other immovable things of value located where the proposed storage lake would go.
• Even if there are no towns or roads in the proposed location, in California, as in many other locations, it’s basically impossible to put in any new dams, because feelings. The ever-so-green liberals, the ones insisting on intermittent energy sources that require backup, don’t want us to drown some worms and make some squirrels and cute bunnies move to the next valley over to create the backup they demand—that would be krool to nature.
• Good sites are often very far from where the power is needed. You can put a conventional power plant, or even a Tesla-style battery, next to a city where the power need exists … but you generally can’t do that with pumped hydro. So you end up with very large transmission costs and transmission losses.
• Pumped hydro is not all that efficient. You only get back about 70%-80% of the energy that you put in …
• The best sites are far too often already in use.
Subject to those constraints, pumped hydro storage is the best of our to-date bad choices. Some new ones will probably be created, but likely few and far between.
So that’s the current state of play in the world of storing energy to generate electricity. Short version? We are a long, long way from batteries or other storage systems being able to hold and deliver enough energy to do anything larger than balance out short-term fluctuations in energy supply versus demand.
My best to all,
w.
Post Scriptum: As always, in the spirit of avoiding misunderstandings, I ask everyone to quote the exact words that you are discussing. That way we can all be clear on exactly what and who you are responding to.
Pumped hydro will never be more that a small contributor. There is a huge shortage of suitable locations.
Yes, the problem is that when you have that mountainous terrain that is required, you usually also have a lot of precipitation with conventional hydro, which is already dispatchable base load with its huge reservoirs. All the good sites for pumped hydro such as Norway, BC, Himalaya and everywhere else, is that they already have fairly good hydrology and good large hydro and storage sites with relatively high head.
British Columbia for example, has hundreds of excellent pumped hydro sites, but why bother when your primary electricity generation is already large and small hydro. As it is already, some of these jurisdictions such as Wa and Oregon have to spill surplus water to take wind and solar at freshet, which has a higher priority on the grid. They have to release water from the dam for fishery/enviro reasons, so a big loss to the better spinning reserve hydro generation.
Hydroelectric energy storage does not occur only with “pumped storage”. All hydroelectric energy generation today is a form of stored energy. Even “run of river” hydro plants still use stored hydro energy – stored in snowpack and in groundwater that discharges to create seasonal river flows as well as base flows.
Willis,
Hydrogen as an alternative to Lithium batteries.
In Australia Dr. Alan Finkel just retired Chief Scientist is pushing Hydrogen hard.
He has a Quarterly Essay last April, “Green Zero”.
I had thought that to produce hydrogen at scale you needed to process either Water or Methane.
The chemical processing of both produces CO2 in volume.
However I read this in the Sydney Daily Telegraph on 14 June-
“Green Energy plans could transform the way we get Power”-
James Campbell, National Political Editor-
“An Australian Company is claiming it has cracked the secret of extracting hydrogen from coal without producing greenhouse gases.
Hydrogen is seen as a ‘clean’ energy and getting hydrogen from coal or biomass waste without releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is regarded as a holy grail of clean energy because unlike wind and solar, it can be produced 24/7.
Clean Energy Resources has been working for eight years on getting hydrogen out of coal and biomass waste without producing greenhouse emissions.
All the processes involved have been around for a century but the company has patents pending on a system it claims ties them together.
Company Spokesman Greg Mirabella said “We have spent years working out the modifications to existing equipment in order to be able to do it.
At the heart of this is a large reactor which we intend to remain an Australian innovation.”
If the technology takes, it has the potential to completely transform the clean energy landscape, Mr. Mirabella said.
The company has been in discussions with governments overseas who are understood to be interested in building a plant based on the company’s process.
…..Energy giant AGL began producing hydrogen from brown coal at its Loy Yang Power Stratton in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.
This $500 million project set up in conjunction with the Australian and Japanese governments will lead to hydrogen being exported to Japan.
If successful, AGL hopes to ramp it up into an estimated $11 billion enterprise.”
If the technology takes……
Please read my essay Hydrogen Hype in ebook Blowing Smoke, then get back about where my math might have been wrong. Not gunna happen.
Rud, these boondoggles don’t have to actually work, they just have to syphon up government funding.
Was it ever thus . . .
Rud,
Thanks.
I have read the chapter in your book “Hydrogen Hype” as well as “ Bugs, Roots and Biofuels.”
I think that Green Hydrogen may go the way of Tim Flannery’s “hot rocks”.
But, but, but, there just must be a “breakthrough” waiting around the corner if only we fund some more “science folks” to look for it…. I mean after all there may just be be some chemical elements that folks missed in filling out the periodic table over the last 150 years…. There just has to be some way around the laws of physics isn’t there…. Who passed those stupid laws anyway ??? Inquiring minds want to know….
Note the row in the periodic table that contains Lead (Pb), that row indicates how well a material can “store electricity” (lower rows can store more “lecricity” per unit of mass than higher rows). Also note that Lead based batteries have been around for about 150 years. Note that above Lead is Nickel, note that Nickel batteries have been around for about 75 years. Note that above Nickel is Lithium, note that Lithium batteries have been around for about 25 years.
Also note that there is nothing ABOVE lithium in the periodic table of elements…. If only someone with sufficient funding (from other people) could just find that missing element that is lighter than lithium, in abundant supply, acts as a wonderful battery, can be acquired with no environmental damage, is easy to process and recycle, non-toxic to anything, looks pretty, etc. etc. I propose we nominate an element with a new name: Pf for Pixium Fineum (Pixie Dust)…
Your energy storage analysis is spot on. Very few technologies gain 5 or 6 orders of magnitude improvement over time, even with endless funding.
A Sodium-Ion battery might offer promise, as salt is super abundant, and this tech doesn’t require super expensive cathode and anode materials. Still in research phase, but might hold promise if it could be scaled up and acquire better efficiencies. Not commercial yet…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/annapowers/2020/01/31/your-next-battery-could-be-made-from-salt-scientists-make-greener-advances/?sh=1225fd6843a5
“Not commercial yet…” Seems to be the mantra of scientists looking for “battery breakthroughs” for the last 50 years….
Same for fusion reactors. But, we have made some incredible advances in battery technology the last 50 years. I never thought we would have the energy densities or cycles in a battery that we now have. More could be done for recycling and then it can be forever re-cast. I never count out the future, just based upon historical advances. Having said that, perhaps there are limits to what is possible, for what we know now. The great promise is what we are yet to learn, which just might be an idea sparked up here on WUWT.
Consumer batteries are just like many other private consumer installed energy systems.
That is, they never decline. are never officially uninstalled, or officially cease to operate, etc.
That is, once they end up on a government list for private consumer systems/equipment, they are there permanently.
Any time the government needs to increase renewable product usage, they increase the parameters under their control, e.g. efficiency, wattage, amperage, hours of operation, etc.
Which is why government charts of privately owned/installed solar, thermal solar, electric vehicle batteries never show declines.
When I see government charts for such things, I wonder how many are still working and whether the numbers represent actual consumer usage or sums generated by totaling all of the batteries or systems manufactured.
I love your simple summaries and facts, Willis!
Taking that number a little further:
Each second has fifty 0.02’s of one second.
Each minute has 3,000 two-hundredths of one second periods.
Each hour has 180,000 two-hundredths of one second periods.
Each day has 4,320,000 two-hundredths of one second periods.
Which suggests that just to extend global electric supply from lithium ion batteries from two-hundredths of one second to one hour requires 4,320,000 times the current installation of Tesla-style batteries.
And that would be for past energy demand, not future energy demand.
Bet leftists are including immense numbers of people needed for lithium mining are included in their rosy future renewable energy employment reports.
Pumped hydro. Hmmm…yeah. Been going on for a long time. In my grandother’s corn-country Iowa town, that meant a water tower. Not for energy, for water under pressure. Still true in countless places. Peace, my friends.
Slightly hilariously the renewable energy mafia have been putting pumped hydro people out of business by reducing the time they can profitably operate.
So to have pumped storage as a load leveler for wind and solar you have to subsidize the pumped hydro, or it will go bottom up. And you also have to subsidize the wind and solar because every time governments stop doing so the energy people stop building wind and solar. Maybe the government should just get all these subsidies in a big pile and use them to build some nice nuclear power stations, which generate electricity steadily day in day out without such bandaids on bandaids on bandaids.
Thank you for mentioning Niagara Falls as an intermittent source of electricity – or rather surging/pulsing is a better description because it is generating most of the time. My father worked on it for Ontario Hydro as a Mech Eng during the construction in the 50’s.
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA – an NGO) claims that Niagara Falls in in fact a pump storage scheme having an unusual combination of features. They said there is an uphill pumping station (classic pumped storage) that puts water from below the tourist feature back into the holding dam above the generating station. In short, that is is not merely a diversion and holding tank.
So there are two views: it is only short term storage in a dam, or it is that plus pumps that are run with grid surplus electricity during off-hours, whether the falls needs the touristy water or not. In fact there is the Sir Adam Beck Pump Generating Station which has 155 MW of pumps and 174 MW of generators. Those are some serious pumps – probably 20 x 8 MW worth. It has an upper reservoir 21 above the lower one holding 20m cubic metres of water.
The OCAA, being anti-nuke, anti-coal, anti-gas, anti-wood and anti-pumped-storage-at-Niagara because it cannot be made any larger (ignoring the Lake Erie and the Falls – duh!) holds that Ontario should increase the useless wind energy programme and bring in hydro power from Northern Quebec. They also believe the natural gas plants that back up the wind systems in SW Ontario should be closed because they are evil.
You might never guess who gives them funds, so I will tell you – two big wind turbine vending companies and “members of the public” who I presume work for Big Wind. They agitated (successfully) against replacing a small gas pipeline from NY State to Toronto because it was going to supply natural gas produced by modern fracking. Old fracking was OK but modern fracking is evil.
The ultimate pumped water scheme would be to pump Lake Ontario up to Lake Erie. You could make is as large as you want. The entire thing could be completely hidden inside the Niagara Escarpment.
Statkraft has some larger batteries:
1. Lake Blåsjø 7,8 TWh
Lake Blåsjø is the ninth largest lake in Norway and was formed by damming up a number of small lakes. Blåsjø lies partly in Aust-Agder County and partly in Rogaland County, and serves as water reservoir for the Ulla-Førre power plants.
2. Lake Storglomvatn 3,5 TWh
Lake Storglomvatn is a regulated lake in the municipality of Meløy in Nordland County. The reservoir is used for power generation at Svartisen power plant in the Holand Fjord.
3. Lake Røssvatn 2,0 TWh
After its regulation in 1957, lake Røssvatn became Norway’s second largest lake in terms of surface area with its 219 square kilometres. The lake is located in the municipalities of Hattfjelldal and Hemnes in Nordland County. Lake Røssvatn is the main reservoir for Upper and Lower Røssåga power plants.
4. Lake Store Akersvatn 1,5 TWh
Lake Store Akersvatn is a lake in the municipality of Rana in Nordland County. The lake is the intake reservoir for the power plants at Rana.
5. Lake Songavatn 1,4 TWh
Lake Songavatn is a regulated lake in the municipality of Vinje in Telemark County. The lake is part of the Skien watercourse, and serves as water reservoir for the Songa power plant
https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/news-and-stories/archive/2013/statkraft-five-largest-batteries/
/Jan
I know of a perfect location for one of these storage lakes. Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The valley it sits in is geographically suited to be easily dammed up. There are several very large coal-fired power plants nearby that will probably be getting closed down soon, and their proximity to Johnstown means it wouldn’t take much to patch into the existing transmission line grid infrastructure already in place. And you can take my word for it, there is NOTHING of value in Johnstown. The surrounding communities are fairly nice and would be even further improved by the removal of a depressed -and depressing- community, as well as the addition of a scenic lake and all the new recreation it would entail. Nature has been trying for over a hundred years to fill it with water (1889, 1936, 1977). Just dam it up and let nature do it’s thing. Please feel free to share my idea with anyone and everyone, I don’t need the credit as long as you can make it happen. I don’t have the proper connections.
Jeeze, I seen to remember my Grandmother (who grew up close to Johnstown PA) reminiscing about a little “high water” event a while back in and around Johnstown PA… Seems the US Red Cross “earned their stripes” responding to that debacle of a “water storage incident”…
Would be very bad form to approach the folks in Johnstown PA and suggest: “Hey, all we want to do is put a whopping big pond of water way up there in the hills above you, trust us, we can make it safe…. That’s either a cruel joke or a suggestion from someone totally ignorant of history, I suspect it’s a troll making jest of all the poor souls lost in the Johnstown flood…
Shame on the moderators for allowing that “jest” which clearly illustrates the definition of “poor taste”…,
Oh, great, Karen has shown up to tell us how krool we are to use a flood from 132 years ago, long before the birth of anyone alive today, to humorously illustrate the dangers of improperly constructed storage … what’s next? You gonna demand that we all pay reparations to the descendants of the Johnstown disaster?
In the spirit of how inhumane it is to joke about the Johnstown flood …
So you can add Senator Kennedy to your list of eeevil people who should be shamed and humiliated …
Then there’s the college prank called the Johnstown Flood … from the Urban Dictionary:
So there’s a bunch more college folks you can condemn for their lack of sensitivity … and then there’s the story of the great piano escape, viz:
Those darned humans, laughing at tragedy! Excommunicate them all!
w.
Not exactly clear who Willis considers a “Karen”, but if Willis is proposing any specific energy storage methods (including water or electrochemical batteries) He should be fully prepared to prepare against the possible failures and OWN the results…
Is “storing” energy with water (to quote “save the planet from AGW”) ok if ONLY a few thousand people die from failed hydro dams every couple of years ?
I suppose it’s fine if you and yours are not affected, get back to us all once you, your spouse, your children and your house is OBLERIATED by a human caused flood….
I suspect there is a fine little valley just upstream from you, I propose it is taken over using eminent domain (to save the planet) and filled with a whopping big dam…. How many times a week are YOU going go look at the dam to make sure “It’s still safe” before retiring to your bed….
Lots of pontificating from Willis, but no answers of any import…
KevinK, I consider YOU a Karen. People have joked about tragedy since there have been people. Get over it.
And I am NOT “proposing any specific energy storage methods”. I’m clearly saying that no known methods will provide enough backup to shore up wind and solar.
As to the rest of your rant, you have very successfully demolished a straw man.
Finally, “no answers of any import”? There are clear and important answers in my post, one of which is the answer to the question “can batteries save the grid”.
w.
Almost 60 years ago, a pumped storage plant was proposed for Storm King Mountain in the Hudson River valley, close to the USMA at West Point. Blocking that plan was one of the first victories of the environmentalist movement that has become a malignant force in American life.
Lithium batteries are a great invention that makes cell phones and laptops part of our daily lives. They are way too expensive and too dependent on rare minerals to be practical for grid scale storage.
The only viable method of powering a technical civilization in the 21st century and beyond is nuclear power. One of the major reasons I think that warmunists are religious nuts, not serious people trying to solve a problem is their out of hand and adamant rejection of this fact.
Dear Willie,
I do take exception to your idea about dams. Here is why. Folsom dam was closed off in 1955. Prior to that time, millions of salmon migrated up the three forks of the American River in two spawnings, spring and fall Chinook. The spring run is now extinct. Consider the food supply of millions of pounds of salmon spawning, then dying and decomposing in the high sierra creeks. All the scavengers, birds, bears, martin, fishers, mice, other rodents, not to mention the copepods and other miniature crustaceans, worms and plankton which fed off the detritus. These creatures lived … depended upon that resource to prep for winter. All of that biomass gone. Now consider the fry hatching in the spring by the billions, again feeding all the little predators, snakes, birds, otters, raccoons, possums, etc., and the trout, bass, catfish, smelts, birds, etc. which relied upon that food source. Gone, in one season. Think about the life lost. Consider that now the Sierra is a bleak place missing all that life which perished due to just one dam. Not only that, any one dam drops the water temperature about 15 degrees F, from the lower 70s to the upper 50s. In addition to that, dams make the water murky, as clear water doesn’t flow from the bottom of dams, buy murky algae water flows out of dams. In addition to that, the spring flood is supposed to disturb the rocks in the river beds making good nesting holes for salmon, again this doesn’t happen. I used to think dams were a really great idea, until my dad talked of fishing for steelhead in downtown Placerville after work. Then I considered the entire consequences of damming the rivers.
What about tidal power plants which offer an interesting storage possibility?
Heat stored in buildings!
It is the best way to store energy if it is heat or cooling required
.
Pumped hydro is not ‘storage’ as it is talked about these days, i.e. an answer to intermittent generation from renewables.
Pumped storage has the ability to come on line in seconds from zero output, it’s function is frequency support so efficiency etc is secondary.
This is what Mr Musk’s ‘huge battery’ in Australia is used for, it wouldn’t last minutes if it had to make up for wind’s deficiencies.
The numbers are way off. For example, Lithium-Ion should be just 16 MWh? Hornsdale alone contributes 194 MWh.
Willis states: “And there are “intermittent flow” systems, which although they are not storage, allow for greater generation at certain times … including Niagara Falls, where the flow over the falls is reduced at night so more power can be generated when it’s not masquerading as a tourist attraction. Not storage … but pretty cool nonetheless …”
Actually, Niagara is not “intermittent flow”, it consists of two humongous elevated reservoirs, one on each side of the US Canada border which are filled at night and emptied during the day through the massive turbine houses on both sides of the Niagara Gorge, 4.77 miles downstream from the falls. (Niagara river runs from south to north, generating plants are north of the falls)
Here is a google maps view of the falls and the two reservoirs which are in fact “pumped storage”.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.1158372,-79.048093,20857a,35y,4.67h/data=!3m1!1e3
If you zoom in, you see each country’s reservoir feeds a two stage hydroelectric generating “fall”. One right at the edge of the reservoir with a shorter “fall” and then one at the gorge with the longest “fall” or head.
In fact when traveling from Canada at the Lewiston-Queenston bridge towards Niagara Falls NY or Buffalo along I-190 you pass mere feet from the tops of the generator/turbines of the short fall/head generators on the US side.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.1462789,-79.0395998,4404a,35y,4.67h/data=!3m1!1e3
Niagara is not “intermittent flow”, it is pumped storage. And most of the pumping occurs at off peak times, such as at night. And the reservoirs drain during peak times, or during the day.
Here is an image of the elevations of the river upstream of the falls, and of the US reservoir and it’s two generating plants. The river before the falls is 558 feet ASL, the US reservoir at the time of this satellite photo is at 614 feet and the short fall generators are at 588 feet, and the long fall generators are at 279 feet.
The first stage or short drop generators have only 26 feet of head at the time of this photo, while the second stage generators have 309 feet of head.
The point is pumps are needed to fill the reservoirs in off peak times as they are ~5 miles from the upper river, and 60 feet higher than the river.
Note there’s no big hills here, only the gorge – these reservoirs were man-made.
The rest of your article makes perfect sense. Just wanted to address the incorrect notion of what Niagara is regards power generation.
Some funny reading in all the comments. Storage in every sense is non-sense wasting energy in every aspect.
Globally many people in third world countries are using Flywheels Kinetic Inertia that multiples the HP of a small 1 HP 120 Volt electric motor to turn larger generators that would normally need over a 16 HP fossil fuel engine. The larger generator produces 5 – 15 kw that once it is turning supplies the 1 HP 120 Volts in a looped system, because once the Flywheel is turning at maximum speed it takes less energy to keep it at that rpm, and provides the excess electricity to power other things like a whole modern house. No Wind or Solar nor exterior energy is needed, just a pull cord like starting a gas lawn mower.
Very simply…anything that takes less input energy than is output energy, that powers the input energy and all excess energy is Free Energy.
mmm….I think you trying to not only describe a perpetual motion device John, but also multiply that original 1 HP 120 volt electric motor to 5-15 kW, which is really stretching the perpetual motion absurdity. No free lunch….repeat after me John…NO Free Lunch.
Amazing that you acknowledge that an electric motor is providing constant rotation and still call it a perpetual motion – that is against the laws of thermodynamics that eventually the rotation would slow to a stop – without adding this small motor to keep the weighted flywheel turning. While the spinning of the heavy flywheel is what starts the generator turning to give the electricity to the small motor. With every pulley creating the increase and decrease of rpm they are in fact flywheels themselves. It is simply physics that spinning weight releases more energy. But it’s not being stored in this case as it is being used to increase the horsepower. B
I gotta a bridge I could sell you…real cheap. Your 5-15 kW generator is going to stall out real quick as it is going to slow down that larger flywheel making the 746 watts for the 1 Hp motor. You might want to re-read the laws of thermodynamics again, and the laws of conservation and get back to me about ‘free’ energy. There is no ‘free energy’. Everything costs.
There are a few dozen videos online that prove you wrong. But then applied engineering is different than academic education. Maybe you should spend more time watching proof than making comments about something you don’t understand.
You should do up a main post/article and publish it here and ‘prove’ how we can just transition to a ‘free energy’ economy using perpetual motion flywheels. If it worked, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, which reminds me…
Imagine if each house and business had their own devices that provided all their electric requirements, that the only carbon used was in creating the components and assembly of them to hook up to their current electric grids.
The main problem with these systems is they cannot be made on a grand scale for a big enough machine to power a small community of hundreds of homes…the size of the flywheel would be in the tons. As with all machines parts wear out like bearings and a shaft to support a flywheel of a thousand pounds and bearings of gigantic sizes. While smaller but still large machines could be connected in tandem to support a community like any solar farm, etc. Gear boxes and transmission are used on some of these machines that eliminate the use of pulleys and belts (I use Planetary Gears that take a small high speed electric motor to generate higher torque at lower speeds that drive a larger gear box to get the rpm needed, using synthetic lubrication), but they still require a big enough flywheel to maintain the momentum of rotation that is the key component of them.
Fossil Fuels industries support building solar and wind turbines because of the giant amounts of fossil fuels used to create them and keep them running. Whole industries would vanish if electricity could become “Free” using these machines, while new industries would be made to make and maintain them, like when Steam Power was made obsolete when electricity came and the internal combustion engines came. So when you think about it, there are powerful industries supported by governments that would do everything they can to prevent this from happening. While they talk the talk of being Fossil Fuels Free and having a Carbon Free Energy…they will prevent you from getting “Off The Grid” because the taxation governments and local governments get from fossil fuels and electric energy would be greatly reduced in the rush to create these “Free Energy Machines.”
https://youtu.be/7sz67RqIl0g
https://youtu.be/IsbEWtQFGHQ
https://youtu.be/S1uCOOeUlnI
https://youtu.be/UV6EA-rDAK4
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” came from Plato’s “our need will be the real creator.”
While alone in the desert some 18 miles to the nearest known help. The battery on my truck went dead because I forgot a cargo light was on when I left it in the morning and hiked all day. Being an automatic there was no way to push start it. I hadn’t seen another person anywhere all day and no vehicle crossed my tracks. I always carry tools and prepare for the fact something could happen to strand me for days. I had a 12 volt drill that had a full charge before I left home. Using some ingenuity I removed the belt from the alternator and some baling wire to secure the drill to the side of it. I used some nylon twine and created a makeshift belt and ran the drill battery until dead. After I put the belt back on the alternator I said a little prayer and the engine fired up even though it cranked over slower than normal because the battery was not fully charged.
Over the next few weeks I designed and built my first “Free Energy Device” using a cheap car alternator, a 120 V 1/2″ drill and a 750 watt power inverter with a small 12 volt, lead acid battery. The battery supplies the inverter with enough power to run the drill, that runs the alternator to keep the battery fully charged during use and a small battery charger, or other stuff like lights, a portable TV, radio, etc… while camping. It make very little noise and has worked for 4 years and going… I make them big enough to run 2 x 5000 watt Inverters off of one alternator, a 1/2 drive, 120 Volt electric Impact Wrench and it charges 2 larger lead acid deep cycle batteries simultaneously, enough to run a travel trailer and anything you can run on 120 volts up to that 5000 watts with a 10000 watts peak per unit.
The point is that there are ways that don’t need fuels, solar or wind and are self contained.
“The battery supplies the inverter with enough power to run the drill, that runs the alternator to keep the battery fully charged during use”
Are you claiming that the battery-powered inverter produces enough energy to run the drill, thereby running the alternator, thereby charging the battery, and that the battery never loses charge?
If so you have somehow managed to find a way around the laws of thermodynamics. You should publish.
Then every vehicle defies thermodynamics because the alternator keeps the battery charged while all your lights, HVA/C, stereo system, headrest TV’s are on while driving…turn the engine off and leave it on and see how fast the battery goes dead. A 5000 watt inverter information says “…to use a deep cycle 12 volt battery and every 30 minutes or so to start the engine for 10 to 15 minutes to not let the battery get depleted past 50%.” If you leave the engine running the alternator charging the battery the battery stays charged. If you exceed the output of the Inverter the battery will discharge. If you exceed the amperage of the alternator output with too many devices in your vehicle, the battery will discharge. Thermodynamics is not exceeded using a fraction of the output to supply the input. Or you would have to turn everything off in your car occasionally to allow the battery to charge. Get it?
And in the process of doing all that, the engine burns fuel, right?
It’s not the battery that is providing the power that the alternator uses to charge the battery, it’s the engine, powered by the gasoline it burns.
Your claim said that the battery supplies the power. But something needs to supply power to the battery. I went back and read it again to be sure: I don’t see anything outside the loop being describe – battery, inverter, drill, alternator, battery. In fact at the end, you say “don’t need fuels”
If you really are able to do all you’re saying without an external source of power, you have discovered something that nobody else has. Like I said, you should publish, or maybe get a patent and try to sell it.
I provided 3 links above to videos that if you take the time to watch them you would know others are already “published” on the subject. These mechanical “Free Energy” devices are being built and sold in many countries and have been for years…some videos are 11 years old. There are dozens of these videos online to choose from and yet, it seems, you would rather be obtuse than educate yourself.
While I took a different approach from using pulleys and belts to gear boxes to make them more efficient, it lowered the needed size of motor and doesn’t need a flywheel and by using Inverters increased the kW output reducing the overall weight. Where the source of input power comes from doesn’t matter, as long as the output is greater than the input required and it is that excess that you use to power other things – as long as you do not exceed the overall output kW. A typically 100 amp car alternator needs 4 HP for full output (1 hp per 25 amps), but when the battery is at full charge they lower the output amps and use less HP to nearly free turning. This is why a disconnected alternator can be spun by hand. But connect it to a discharged battery and it will not spin and takes force to turn it, because of the built in circuits. Thereby, keeping the battery at full charge takes less energy to turn the alternator, while it will take more energy to charge a depleted battery, that if you’re constantly using energy at the maximum output of the alternator and the amperage of the batteries it will cause the batteries to discharge. This is not over unity nor a perpetual motion because energy is constantly being used to create a greater amount energy that a fractional part of the greater energy is used to keep it working. .
“energy is constantly being used to create a greater amount energy”
Thank you for demonstrating you’re delusional. I think we’re done.
“Thank you for demonstrating you’re delusional. I think we’re done.”
The problem with ignorance is that people do not know they’re ignorant, because they are basing their opinions on the knowledge they have and lack the knowledge of information they haven’t learned. You can be the most intelligent person to ever have lived and still not know everything there is to know. If you choose to not educate yourself is your prerogative. But education cures ignorance and can in fact create indoctrination in those that never question what they’re told to believe. History is filled with people doing things that were said to be impossible by their teachers.
Then every vehicle that is running with all their lights and accessories are breaking those “laws of thermodynamics” and especially all those massive big rigs with all their lights and those massive RV Motorhomes using inverters to watch their entertainment centers off of their alternators and batteries. Most RV’s are DC and use AC when at parks they can hook to, but their whole system is DC and they use a Rectifier Converter to convert the AC to DC. An Inverter takes DC and through coils and circuits create AC.
Take Tesla uses an AC induction Motor in the Model S but it is less efficient than the permanent magnet DC motors in their Model 3. The Battery is DC that has to have a Converter to run the Model S Induction Motors. To run the DC Permanent Magnet Motors is a simple DC battery to DC at the voltage and amps needed and has a full range of power from slow to fast, that the AC Motor loses power at the higher the RPM through the Converter.
Tesla Motors are high speed motors that use gears to reduce the RPM while increasing the Torque/HP. That 2 DC PM motors (AWD) – the size of an old 1970s Starters for a 454 CID GMC – produces 450 hp (336 kW) and 471 lb-ft (639 Nm) but uses 24 kWh/100 miles. You could take one of those motors and gears boxes make it 2 WD to run a 11.5 kW AC Generator that would keep the 75 kWh battery pack fully charged and who needs 0 – 60 in 3.1 second and 162 top speed if they never have to stop to charge the battery pack with an on-board system?
A cheap 7 Amp 120 Volt AC Impact Wrench has 230 ft-lb of torque that’s nearly half the torque/hp of the AWD Tesla Model 3. Uses a motor that a man can hold in his hand touch their thumb and forefinger…the Gears are where the 30,000 rpm makes the torque/hp at 1,200 rpm enough to run any alternator or bigger generator using more gears and a “flywheel” setup. But then I’m not telling you all the secrets…
Hi Willis;
I always enjoy your posts, which are invariably thought-provoking. I looked at the Sandia database and have a couple of methodological questions as I seek to duplicate your numbers;
1. For pumped hydro storage, I can get to 1.7 TWh by excluding Announced and De-commissioned projects, and by assuming 10 hours of duration at rated output per project (I assume you use this as a somewhat generous “best case” for each one, and also because the rated Duration is zero for most of the database. The actual non-zero average is 16.7 but this is skewed by two silly outliers; removing them yields an average of 4.4). Does this align with your reasoning?
2. According to Our World in Data, electricity GENERATION averaged 71 TWh / day in 2020. CONSUMPTION will be somewhat less due to grid losses; the most recent number I found (from the EIA for 2018) was 61 TWh. So the ratio of storage to consumption, while still dismal, should be 14% less dismal. Would you agree?
Cheers,
Ken
Ken, since the grid losses are the same for stored or generated energy, I’ve used energy generated vs. energy stored.
w.
In South Africa, we have two pumped-storage facilities in the Drakensberg foothills. A couple of years ago, we had a shortage of power that these facilities were unable to help with. The reason? Drought! The feeder river(s) for the lower dams were just about dry, so no water to pump! So weather dependent problems can attack the BACK-UP as well as the main systems!
Thanks Willis,
You say that pumped hydro isn’t very efficient at 70-80% energy recovery. That actually sounds pretty good for many energy storage/transfer systems. Could you give some idea of the efficiency of the other storage systems you refer to?
Sorry if this has been asked before – it is already a long string of comments!
The 2 best stored energy sources are fossil fuels and nuclear. More of these, please.
I appreciate the post. I know SCMES are exotic and expensive, so was jet travel as mass transportation in 1958. The advantage of superconductive magnetic energy storage systems is they are scalable, instantaneous, on demand, 99% efficient and have good energy density for micro-applications, like my home. A commercialized SCMES in my home would enable the storage and on demand distribution of electricity generated by: 1) generators spun by micro-turbines burning natural gas, methane, oil, coal gas, propane used to heat water and my home, (see Capstone), 2) Solar, 3) wind, 4) water, 5)TEG….etc. I don’t give a hoot about climate change propaganda. Climate change is a pawn in a global power struggle over energy markets and the coming of the Battery….and with it, the age of the Robot, LOL. Of course “We” don’t need the “Battery” (definitely don’t need the age of the robot), we have macro storage systems coming out of our ears. But do we really need a bloated and colluded energy and utility industries continuing without any competition?
So I thought I would add this very nice little graph comparing storage systems… note the SCMEs and Micro SCMES in the graph. If it is too small go to:https://quantumlevitation.com/archives/4938 and scroll down.
One little detail you miss about Niagara Falls. It is NOT “pumped storage”. It is arranged so gates are opened in the river and the water flows by gravity to fill the reservoirs, instead of flowing over the Falls. Yes they turn OFF the Falls at midnight to fill the storage.
I grew up in that area, and we even water skied on the Niagara River upstream about 6 miles. It was usually too cold except in late July and Aug.
It is the only intermittent, gravity fed, hydro storage system I have heard about.
You mean the Lewiston Pumped Storage development that is part of the Niagara project? I guess technically not pumped storage but that’s what its called.
I became aware of pumped hydro storage at school when we studied the Tugela Vaal hydro scheme in South africa.
Water is pumped up from the water rich Kwa-Zulu Natal midlands up the escarpment to the Witwatersrand, primarily this was to supply water to support mining and industry in Johannesburg/Pretoria. The pumping was (then at least) powered by reliable coal powered generation.
During peak demand water is released back down the escarpment to generate power.
Emphasis on using reliable off peak coal generation. There was a reason expectation of stored capacity being available for peak demand.
No such expectation can exist where the stored capacity is supposedly going to be created by unreliable intermittent “Renewable” generation.